Cypress shares fell about 6 percent, while Fairchild slumped as much as 10 percent Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange. However, Cypress’ stock recouped some losses after the company issued a strong outlook.

“It’s basically because Intel set the bar pretty high,” ThinkEquity analyst Vijay Rakesh said. And some of the news was expected, he added.

Merriman Curhan Ford analyst Bill Ong said investors, largely, have been expecting good news from chipmakers and it is probably priced into the stocks.

“I think it’s just more about the timing of the results, people are just more negative today,” Ong said. “It seems more sentiment driven.”

Shares of chipmakers such as Xilinx, Altera and Advanced Micro Devices AMD.N also fell, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index .SOXX was down as much as 2 percent at 327.75. Cypress and Fairchild forecast a strong fourth quarter ahead of the holiday season.

Cypress, which makes computer hardware like programmable clocks, memory and controllers, forecast fourth-quarter earnings of 10 cents to 11 cents a share, excluding items, on revenue of $180 million to $185 million. [ID:nWNAB9605]

Analysts expected the company to earn 9 cents a share, excluding items, on revenue of $179 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The chipmaker also expects a better-than-seasonal first quarter, a company executive said on a conference call with analysts. The company had posted a 16 percent fall in revenue on a sequential basis in the year-ago period.